Ubuntu 9.04 on the Sony VGN-FZ21E

The previous article was about Ubuntu 8.10 on this machine, the article is available here

The Sony VGN-FZ21E is a sexy little laptop that has become my joy. Whilst being a laptop designed for Windows Vista, it is still perfectly usable with Linux. Here is a little article about my joys and deceptions on this little laptop.

Hardware

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2Ghz processor

RAM: 2GB DDR2 SDRAM

HDD: Hitatchi HTS 54161 160GB DD 5400rpm

WiFi (802.11 a/b/g)

DVD Drive:Pioneer DVR-K17

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8400M GT GPU with 256MB RAM

Installation of Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 4

There were many rumors around that the graphical installer couldn't format drives do ext4, so I chose the net-install version. The installation was easy enough, using the usual Debian installer interface. My lappy has been upgraded with a 250Gb hard drive, so this time I chose to create three partitions, /, /home and a swap partition. Some people may want to put everything onto a single partition, but I've been reinstalling this laptop regularly, and I'll probably do a fresh reinstall when Ubuntu 9.04 hits release, so creating several partitions is going to save me time.

I had a slight problem on the installer, but that was probably liked to the alpha status. The installer complained that it couldn't find any kernel modules, and warned that continuing might be a bad idea, since the install would probably fail, but it didn't.

Wireless network

The wireless card allowed me to connect immediately to a WEP and WPA access point. The utility provided, NetworkManager Applet 0.7.0.99, gave me all the information necessary, and synced immediately to the access point. The WLAN light on front of the laptop blinks on network activity.

Sound card

Sound is distinctly quieter than on a Windows platform. There is also a problem with the card driver; if you plug in a set of headphones, the sound is still routed through the speakers, and you cannot hear anything in the headphones. This is the same as with Ubuntu 8.10. New to 9.04, ALSA sound is corrupted, but the OSS driver works. You need to create a special file to set module options. Create a file called snd-hda-intel, place it in /etc/modprobe.d/ and put this in it:

options snd-hda-intel model=vaio

Reboot the PC, and the sound card will be fully functional.